Nexus S Beats iPhone 4 In 'Real World' Web Browsing Tests

bongey writes "In a series of measured real-world web load tests, the Android-based Nexus S phone spanked the iPhone 4. The Android phone and iPhone 4 median load times were 2.144s and 3.254s respectively. The sample size was 45,000 page loads, across 1000 web sites. It also follows rumors that Apple is intentionally slowing down web apps to make their native apps more favorable."

That's nice.

[DWMorse]

That's nice.

Now, how quickly does it play Netflix movies? What's it's Hulu Plus app like, does it work nicely?

You don't say.

Seriously, for shame. I really do want an Android phone. It just isn't as functional yet. Another year or two of maturity and I think I'll finally get to switch.

Re:Meh

[SwabTheDeck]

Isn't the iPhone's A4 CPU supposedly some hundred MHz slower than the the one in the Nexus S, giving it better battery life? I don't think this has anything to do with strangling web apps, just different design goals.

The iPhone 4 is 777 MHz while the Nexus S is 1 GHz. Both are based on the ARM Corext-A8 and both have 512 MB of RAM. Given the difference in CPU speed, the results of the page load tests don't seem far departed from what would be expected. While the Nexus S is still proportionally a little faster, it isn't so wildly so that it can't be attributed to some minor tweaks in the OS or browser software. Using the term "spanked" seems a bit sensationalist in this instance.

How Do I Moderate an Entire Article as Flamebait?

[macs4all]

Really, this is pretty much a new low in comment-baiting for Slashdot.

This so-called "test" is so utterly and completely unscientific as to be not worth the service space it is stored on.

Period.

It's supposed to be NEWS for Nerds, and this hardly qualifies. And, not content to troll on its own, the summary has to link to ANOTHER Flamebait summary to "support" its "point".

Note to Slashdot: You can do better than this; so DO it already!

Re:Really?

[dgatwood]

Especially since if last week's story about slower JavaScript performance in apps that embed WebKit is correct, that means there's a good chance that the native browser in iOS would spank the Android browser despite being on a slower CPU.

Re:Bogus

[iluvcapra]

Here, they address this point. First, they compared their app's times with Safari's times, and found no noticeable difference.

To go to the trouble of testing the thing with their own app, then testing Safari, publishing the numbers for their own app and not publishing the benchmark for Safari seems obtuse in the extreme. Just tell us the numbers you got for the browser.

Second, they point out that javascript performance accounts for a small fraction of the load times (see large yellow box at the top of the page), and if Nitro was not in use,

A web browser renders content and loads it as well as executing stuff; javascript is only one part of the whole operation and only pertains to certain use cases.

they estimate that using it would improve Safari's load times, but would not dramatically change the results.

Why estimate when they can just run a benchmark on the actual browser, instead of handwaving?